 In our research, we analyzed the link between macroeconomic conditions and fertility dynamics. It is natural to think that families will not have kids when the economy is in a recession, hence concluding that the fertility is prosyclical, which means it increases in good times and decreases in bad times of the economy. It is because families have less income during a recession or increase their savings, hence they decrease or postpone their childbearing decisions. It is incredibly true for the U.S. economy since mid-70s. However, the story may not be that simple and fertility was actually counter-cyclical during 60s, which means that women are having more children, especially when the economy does badly. The argument behind counter-cyclical fertility is the time-cost argument. When the economy is in a boom, people earn higher wages, which increases the opportunity cost of having children because children require taking time off from the work. On the other hand, a spell of unemployment could be seen as a perfect opportunity to have a child as the opportunity cost is minimized. In our research, we argued that analyzing labor market with a gender perspective is crucial in understanding cyclical behavior of fertility. We observed that men are mostly working in prosyclical industries such as construction and manufacturing, which are heavily hit by the recession, whereas women work in counter-cyclical industries such as education, health and government, which are not affected or even improve in economic downturns. As a result, in a typical family, when the recession hits, it is usually the man who loses the job and the woman becomes the breadwinner. As the breadwinner of the family, women cannot afford to take time off to have a child and this channel is crucial in understanding why fertility is prosyclical. In order to understand the role of gender differences in employment risk, determining fertility dynamics, we would like to observe the data in terms of cyclicality of industries and the different periods in which fertility was more prosyclical and more counter-cyclical. What we would like to also do is to answer some questions that we cannot answer with the data such as consider a world where women are construction workers and men are nurses instead and ask the question, what would fertility be? There are two main parts in our analysis. First is the empirical part where we document the cyclical behavior of industries as well as cyclicality of fertility for different time intervals since 60s in the US. Also compare US states in terms of how strong the breadwinner women's story is and how prosyclical fertility is. In the second and the main part of our analysis, we build a model in which families decide how many children to have and how much resources to spend for their education depending on the income shocks that they face and this whole framework allows us to answer questions such as what would fertility be if men were nurses and women were construction workers instead. In our empirical analysis, we have two main findings. First, we show that volatility of male employment is at least 50% higher than volatility of female employment and women's income sharing in the family is higher in a recession. Our second result is when we compare US states, we show that in US states where the breadwinner women's story is stronger, we actually find more prosyclical fertility. In our theoretical analysis, we have three main results. First, when we make men to be nurses, women to be construction workers instead, we will actually find consyclical fertility but at the expense of lower human capital. In such a world, women will benefit from a recession to have a child but they will have less resources to spend for their education. Our second result is when the female income share is low which means that they contribute less to the family budget than the breadwinner women's story doesn't hold. In that case, women will have more kids especially when the economy does badly and this reflects the US economy in the 60s. However, the female income share increase over time as they also work in more stable jobs, they became breadwinners in recessions which tilted fertility being towards more prosyclical. Our third result is that women incur long-term and short-term child penalties that is their earnings decrease substantially around 30% right after childbirth and this decreases permanent. Knowing this, women will think ahead before having a child. In the current labor market structure where men work in unstable jobs and women work in stable jobs, women know that if the recession hits they will be the breadwinner in the family. So if they have a child right now, they will not be able to support their family in case of a recession. As a result, they have less children overall and prefer investing more in their education instead. In today's world, families not only decide how many children to have but how much resources to spend for them. They face a trade-off between having another child or spending more on existing children and the literature calls this quality quantity trade-off. Our findings indicate the importance of macroeconomic conditions in determining fertility dynamics in a world where women bear the majority of time cost and families face a quality quantity trade-off. We contribute to the literature by offering an additional channel through which fertility is affected from economic downturns. Our channel should also be taken into account in order to design effective policies because it is important to understand why the fertility behave the way it does and what are the consequences of this in terms of human capital investment. In most developed countries, fertility rates are low and families try to invest more and more in children's education in order to overcome obstacles created by the inequality. We highlight an important channel through which families prefer having less children and investing more in their education and are also affected substantially from economic downturns. Our research question became even more important with the COVID-19 pandemic. As opposed to previous recessions, COVID-19 recession is mostly a female recession where job losses were more severe among women than among men. What is more striking is that the time cost of children increased substantially with daycare and school closures. Our framework is very relevant to analyze fertility dynamics in a pandemic situation and our preliminary findings indicate a collapse in fertility. The majority of this collapse is coming from the short-run increase in time cost of children but also potentially higher long-term career costs arising from being away from the labor market to take care of children as well as substantial income losses.